Add instance store volumes to an Amazon EC2 AMI - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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Add instance store volumes to an Amazon EC2 AMI

You can create an AMI with a block device mapping that includes instance store volumes.

If you launch an instance that supports non-NVMe instance store volumes using an AMI that specifies instance store volume block device mappings, the instance includes the instance store volumes. If the number of instance store volume block device mappings in the AMI exceeds the number of instance store volumes available to the instance, the additional instance store volume block device mappings are ignored.

If you launch an instance that supports NVMe instance store volumes using an AMI that specifies instance store volume block device mappings, the instance store volume block device mappings are ignored. Instances that support NVMe instance store volumes get all of their supported instance store volumes, regardless of the block device mappings specified in the instance launch request and the AMI. The device mapping of these volumes depends on the order in which the operating system enumerates the volumes.

Considerations

  • The number of available instance store volumes depends on the instance type. For more information, see Available instance store volumes.

  • You must specify a device name for each block device. For more information, see Device names for volumes on Amazon EC2 instances.

  • When you launch an instance, you can omit non-NVMe instance store volumes specified in the AMI block device mapping or add instance store volumes.

  • For M3 instances, specify instance store volumes in the block device mapping of the instance, not the AMI. Amazon EC2 might ignore instance store volume block device mappings in the AMI.

Console
To add instance store volumes to an Amazon EBS-backed AMI

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances and select the instance.

  3. Choose Actions, Image and templates, Create image.

  4. On the Create image page, enter a meaningful name and description for your image.

  5. For each instance store volume to add, choose Add volume, from Volume type select an instance store volume, and from Device select a device name.

  6. Choose Create image.

Amazon CLI
To add instance store volumes to an AMI

Use the create-image command with the --block-device-mappings option to specify a block device mapping for an EBS-backed AMI. Use the register-image command with the --block-device-mappings option to specify a block device mapping for an instance store-backed AMI.

--block-device-mappings file://mapping.json

The following block device mapping adds two instance store volumes.

[
    {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/sdc",
        "VirtualName": "ephemeral0"
    },
    {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/sdd",
        "VirtualName": "ephemeral1"
    }
]
PowerShell
To add instance store volumes to an AMI

Use the New-EC2Image cmdlet with the -BlockDeviceMapping parameter to specify a block device mapping for an EBS-backed AMI. Use the Register-EC2Image cmdlet with the -BlockDeviceMapping parameter to specify a block device mapping for an instance store-backed AMI.

-BlockDeviceMapping $bdm

The following block device mapping adds two instance store volumes.

$bdm = @()

$sdc = New-Object -TypeName Amazon.EC2.Model.BlockDeviceMapping
$sdc.DeviceName = "/dev/sdc"
$sdc.VirtualName = "ephemeral0"
$bdm += $sdc

$sdd = New-Object -TypeName Amazon.EC2.Model.BlockDeviceMapping
$sdd.DeviceName = "/dev/sdd"
$sdd.VirtualName = "ephemeral1"
$bdm += $sdd